Miyagi

Sendai is where most visitors to Tohoku begin: a modern, functional, well-fed city of one million people with an excellent covered shopping district, a castle hill, and restaurants serving the region's signature dish — beef tongue, grilled over charcoal, accompanied by tail soup and barley rice. From Sendai, the rest of Miyagi unfolds easily: Matsushima Bay thirty minutes to the east, with its 260 pine-covered islands and century-old temple; Naruko Onsen to the northwest, where five distinct spring types flow through a single gorge; and the Sanriku coast to the east, where some of the world's finest seafood is landed daily.

The accessible face of Tohoku — a city that functions as a base and a prefecture that quietly exceeds all expectations set by that base.